Central Private Welcomes Football Season and Says Goodbye to a Teammate and Friend

By Patrick Tate

Opening night for the Central Private Rebel football team was an issue of good news, bad news.  The good news was football has begun.  The bad news was the Rebels suffered their first defeat of the season.  It was also a night when the Rebel fans and Central Private School and football team said their official good-byes to the departed Steven Whiddon who passed away in a tragic car acccident in June.  His number 74 was retired at the ceremony that included his former presenting his jersey to his parents.

Central Private once again struggled on offense as it was limited to 136 yards of total offense and suffered six turnovers on the night.  It was the first official game for the two CP quarterbacks, which is the good news.  Improvement will come.  The Rebels were also flagged nine times which were drive killers.

Despite the sluggish CP offense, the defense turned in another impressive effort, limiting Cathedral to an average of 2 yards per rush.  Cathedral was able to score on big plays and turnovers however.  An 86 yard pass from Caleb Upton who threw for 242 yards on the night, to Dustin Huffines began the scoring with 6:54 remaining in the first half.  The play occured one play after the Rebels turned the ball over on downs at the Cathedral 16-yard line.

Upton was then able to score on a one yard sneak after an interception return to the CP one yard line.  Central Private then began its only scoring drive of the night.  It was an 8-play, 65-yard drive high lighted by a 25-yard Zach Leblanc run over the right side.  Trevor Shepherd added 16-yards rushing on the drive which ended with a Ryan Bowman 1-yard plunge into the endzone with 2:56 remaining in the half. 

Cathedral was able to take control of the ball game with its second 16-play drive of the evening in the third quarter.  CHS was led by Huffines and Upton once again.  Huffines had 106-yards receiving on the evening to go with 2 interceptions and a fumble recovery.  The drive ended with a 32-yard pass from Upton to Fleming at the 9:22 mark of the 4th quarter.  Ben Hammitte ended the scoring taking an interception 54 yards to pay dirt.

Despite the set back for the Rebels, they did show some bright spots especially on the defensive side of the ball.  The best news is that it was only game one and the Rebels have plenty of time to fine tune an offense that lost 2,000 yard rusher Bobby Muse to graduation.